Cancer is a major health risk in the United States and internationally. Treatments exist, but are often not administered to patients until the disease has progressed to a point at which treatment efficacy is compromised.
A major challenge in cancer treatment is to identify patients early in the course of their disease. This is difficult under current methods because early cancerous or precancerous cell populations may be asymptomatic and may be located in regions which are difficult to access by biopsy. Thus a robust, minimally invasive assay that may be used to identify all stages of the disease, including early stages which may be asymptomatic, would be of substantial benefit for the treatment of cancer.